53 thoughts on “Reinventing HTML: discuss”

I think it’s very brave to try and reinvent something that’s got such a widespread adoption and so many flawed interpretations.
Sure, HTML is starting to show some cracks and inefficiencies but that’s mnostly becuase Ajax / Web2.0 / JavaScript and the competing DOM and event models of IE and Gecko are really starting to push the en envelope.
Another incremental evolution (similar to 3.2 to 4.0) is due – to maybe provide some better/more efficient short-cuts that today still require a lot of common code, but also (IMO) it’s important that the standards are tightened up around both the DOM, the event model, CSS, Behaviours etc as well as adding some much needed things (eg maxlength on textarea or more OS style combo boxes – rather than the simplistic select) to put the heavy lifting back into the browser and out of th developer space.
Tim BL et al did an amazing job, and it’s so cool to see that he’s not just kicked back and said “I rock”.. if he thinks it needs addressing…. maybe it’s time for the Gecko and IE teams (now they’ve got their 2.0 and 7 releases out of the door) to sit up and listen…
I, for one, would love to be able to contribute to this process…

In his article, Tim BL cites HTML, xHTML and XHTML2. I’m curious. Does “xHTML” represent XHTML1/XHTML1.1? since they are a transistional bridge to XML? And. since XHTML1/XHTML1.1 are not noted specifically in his article, are these two markup languages to be obsoleted?

My opinion is that is their quest to “evolve” their standards, the W3C is starting to become an obstacle for their adoption. It seems evident that it is impossible to make something a true standard (adopted by the wide majority), when you make it a moving target at the same time. So in my opinion the W3C should concentrate on making higher quality standards, rather than releasing poor standards often, and fixing things that are not really broken. “Release early, release often!” is good practice for (open source) developers, not for standard bodies!

all main browsers have finally reached an acceptable level of support for XHTML and CSS

most influential figures in the web world are pulling for XHTML and semantic markup

the XHTML and semantic markup litterature is there

in the medium/large corporate world, HTML is being obsoleted in favor of the processing-friendly XHTML

most (if not all) web software makers are on the XHTML bandwagon

Why add yet another version to a spec that we know should have died long ago? This will not help.

You should go the opposite direction.

Deprecate HTML. Completely. Get rid of the HTML validator too.

Provide on the W3C site a version of the XHTML 2.0 spec that mere mortals can read. That cryptic spec is probably the biggest obstacle to the adoption of XHTML: it scares to death anyone who looks at it. Its a Medusa.

Specs are not enough. You have to explain as clearly as possible the choices made in those specs. XHTML is much better than HTML, yes, but you have to tell people why, in a compelling manner. Not everyone is addicted to Molly’s, Jeffery’s, Eric’s or Dave’s blogs.

Lobby the makers of code-generating software. Make sure they think XHTML first. Same for browser vendors.

I’m glad that various peoples opinions on this are not going un-noticed. One thing though is there anywhere I can read regarding what improvements are to be made to the validator? One thing that would be ideal would be to make it easier to download/compile and move to another location therefore being able to call it recursively to test an entire site off/on line.

Browser support is a huge hurdle here. I see a couple modes of attack:

One, consider backwards compatibility through scripting. That is, if Internet Explorer 8 won’t support the next generation of HTML, it should somehow be possible for a script to take a full-featured HTML document, process it, and make it work pretty well in common user agents. Google’s ExplorerCanvas is an example of this strategy, sort of (albeit not with a W3C standard).

Two, consider making standards that mesh with nonstandard extensions to HTML and the DOM — where careful authors can write standards-compliant code that happens to work in nonstandard user agents. I don’t know whether there’s any point to basing a standard on IE’s approach to embedding XML in HTML, but maybe there is. Standardizing XMLHTTP and XSLT processors (if there aren’t already W3C standards) wouldn’t do any harm.

Three, add features that you know browser makers will pick up eventually. If it has to do with security and it’s designed in consultation with Microsoft, it will probably wind up in the next update of Internet Explorer. Implementation difficulty, backwards compatibility, and value in the eyes of browser developers are the three big things that count here.

Would it be presumptuous at all to make a suggestion re this latest development..? No, cool.. ;)

If [Reinventing HTML] becomes something new, an at least somewhat clean slate that some major number of us will be encouraged to use as the reference of the Future, would you all please consider starting out right from the beginning regularly supplementing the latest [standard] with applicable (small) images or diagrams..?

Am thinking of, say, the concept of nesting as an easy example.. There are those who could over and OVER read a recommendation for proper nesting and never ever grasp the concept but for whom one picture of the same would be worth the proverbial thousand words..

Am proffering this with thoughts of further accessibility (cognitive disabilities) and possibly saving just a tiny bit of email traffic hitting the multiple related lists.. In addition, the ease of use of something does play some significant part in the extent to which that something will be implemented..

Thanks in advance for considering the above in the spirit in which it was presented.. Looking forward to seeing what direction you all are up to next.. Always an adventure.. :)

“Reinventing HTML” is a collection of correct statements which sum to something incorrect.

What is wrong is what has been forgotten. What has been forgotten is that the incredible achievements of the W3C, of recognized historical importance, have always been on the political plane, not the technical. Consummate politicians, the W3C volunteers may have had an ideal in mind but the “art of the possible” constrained every effort and the practical results are worthy indeed.

One could very well apply every cited criticism of practical HTML to the English language. My unhandsome native language was born of the compromise and illogic of daily intercourse — and has continued so to this day. Those who yearn to speak a language beautiful in its logic should not speak English. The existence of software spellcheckers is condemnation enough! Yet English continues to find profitable application and so will HTML in the very same sense.

At present Google itself is mostly made with non-valid markup and does not seem to down-rate non-valid markup on indexed pages. Naturally as a result there is a general lack of attention to the format of a page by the very people who could have the most impact on the future of web (as they spend their every waking minute trying to boost their keyword ranking) and avoid the W3C rules. These posts attest well to this.

The turn towards a “partnership” of use between those in SEO and the W3C is achieved when we are able to see how H1 to H6 content is actually part of the check that the validator offers — that the idea of a page being 99% valid with no major tag errors is certainly a sure way to assure one that the cross browser reading of the page will work IN THE FUTURE when (in 50 or 150 years from now) markup will change and what was not done right will be lost.

You may say “what do I care for my keyword placement when I am dead?” The answer is that if your product, your firm, your essay, your photography, or what ever it is that you have made and placed in ranking is SAVED over time it will be saved owing to its markup.

Value for long long term placement comes by pure logic from the w3c.

This is all well and fine BUT DOES THE w3c wish to promote this partnership — this would lead to a whole new huge force of webmasters helping the w3c — all that is needed is that a portion of the w3c would turn its attention to white hat SEO in tags — and what better place than with the semantic web!

I think new browsers should definitely check the syntax of XHTML, CSS and JavaScript (as some of them already do) documents. But the point is: “Good” old HTML should be shown in the browser as always. So we’ve got the needed downward compatibility. A new XHTML version should be treated in a different way: if there are (syntax) errors in the document, the page will not be shown, instead there is a error report.

New versions of XHTML should have got some “cool”, “kick-ass” features and possibilities, or whatever. The goal is to make the new version as popular as possible.
Because it is definitely standard XHTML x.0 (CSS, JavaScript, …) it should be much simpler for the browsers to render. That hopefully brings us better browser compatibility, what would be the smashing advantage over old non-standard and non-audited HTML.

I think the growing Mozilla movement shows that there is not only one browser, even (X)HTML beginners should be able to realize that fact. If they also realize the advantages of XHTML we’ve won.

I Thin it’s not a good idea to continue the development of HTML only because some developers are too lazy to use XHTML. XHTML is a really good ML, and every effort should be made to continue development on XHTML.

You’re probably SOL until sites like myspace.com start accomodating standards. As long as they allow users (non-developers) to customize their own page with a smorgasborg or poorly crafted code, the poorly crafted code will keep getting written.

I wish you the best of luck, though, and look forward to your solutions.

if you go to alexa.com, see what the top 10 web sites in the US are, and look at the source of their home pages, it is all
plain-old” html – no sign of xhtml, xforms, etc. Perhaps there needs to be some explaining done as to why 98% of the web developers/users out there should care about more standards developments at this point? Everyone is tunring to AJAX to do their web apps, and unless it can be explained clearly and compellingly why anyone would want to switch to newer standards, no one will.

Wait when was noticed that some people akin to WhatWG has plans to add XML applications into next HTML5 tag soup, breaking today backward compatibility with hundred of tools.

For example your today working documents containing a XML tag <none> would be invalid for a HTML5 browser, whereas new HTML5 tools would generate <none> which would generate error when processes by a XML parser.

The attempt to get the world to switch to XML, including quotes around
attribute values and slashes in empty tags and namespaces all at once
didn’t work. The large HTML-generating public did not move, largely
because the browsers didn’t complain.

I’ve read Tim’s blog, and I don’t see how he can get around that.

Myself, I use both FF and IE browsers. Routinely, web sites break FF, sometimes both. Unless Tim’s XML body can compel browsers to complain (how?) I really don’t see that it will do anything differently.

Some of the inertia in the html standard is incredible. I taxed one site developer for producing an all-Flash shop window site, which is almost unusuable (can’t link to pages, can’t cut, can’t paste – not even phone numbers!) and he’s utterly unrepentant. “This way, it looks the same to everybody,” he said.

For example of inertia: my browser routinely traps popup windows. So, these days, do most. What is going on? Why are site designers writing popup code in a world where nobody can see the stuff?

I suspect the answer is that people are using automated CMS tools like the FCKEditor. That allows you to generate a new window with several options. One is * target=”_blank” * another is popup. The one is “deprecated” and the other futile. What will stop people using the built-in CMS tools?

As long as people are prepared to ignore browser-objection on the scale that you get for popups, what hope is there to persuade them to start using new features? and, more to the point, to stop using old ones?

I have to agree with Nicholas. I went through all the trouble to teach myself about proper HTML/SGML and now XHTML/XML and everything involved to make sure the websites are done the way they should be.

I also agree with the point that from a version 1 to a version 2 the specification suddenly seems to quadruple and stack feature upon useless feature which only serves a very minor part of the community.

People are moving to XML. It’s just taking a while.
There will always be people who don’t want to change anything that works. Nothing will change that. There will be web pages in HTML 1.0 forever. In the 1970s, there were programs running under an IBM1400 emulator, itself running under an IBM7094 emulator, on IBM370s.
The one fatal mistake would be to let this stop the rest of us progressing to XML amd CSS. This whole proposal is broken.

I think that the concept re-inventing HTML is kind of like closing the dooe after the horse has bolted, as the saying goes.
Although Tim and all the W3C staff have the best intentions in mind, we as a community need to educate designers on the existing standards before creating more rules to be broken.

Do someone plan to translate the post of Tim into French, or can I do it? (Cf last comment.)

Very good idea to improve the human-readibility of the validator. May this include translations of the messages? I’ll be very happy to participate.

Regarding the matter of HTML, I use XHTML for my private documents, so as to see syntax errors in my navigator, but I can’t on the web, since I can’t deny access to people who have an obsolete browser, grumble.

What I like most with XML with namespaces is that you do not have to reinvent the wheel each time you need it. At present with HTML you may have one , one , and the same in your RDF file — example of problems caused by a transitional step. But how can we switch when the most part of people suffer from an old browser?

The real problem in any case is browser vendors not yet fully implementing existing specs. What makes you think they will implement future ones?

I actually think the W3C should invest the time and resources into generating a rendering engine rather than creating yet another spec. If I write the most perfect XHTML and beautiful CSS and error free accessible Javascript I want this to work on all platforms, not just on those who implement the part of the spec I am using.

I realise this a contentious issue, but I honestly do not see the point in having so many different rendering engines. Everybody is simply reinventing the wheel. Let the browser vendors concentrate on what they should have been concentrating all along: browser usability, not markup.

There was a period of about 5 years where almost nothing happened in browser development. Now we’ve had some pretty major developments, but are we going to see another period of stagnation as browser vendors start implementing yet another version of HTML?

I am not a “tekky” (I’m afraid I know of no other term!) but I am extremely interested in ICT, in communication, language, meaning and society. The web is central to all of these things now.

Surely listening is only possible if there already exists some initial premise and approach to that premise. If this is not the case then only hearing will result. Babies are hard wired with the basics to build semantic structures from the noise around them but adults shouldn’t rely on this inate ability in their approach to communication.

It seems to me that there is an apparent absence of fundamental principles and values at the heart of the evolution of the web and of it’s current “management”. While I appreciate the strenuous efforts being made to enforce conformity, these have only resulted in them being set in opposition to what people are doing or wanting on the ground, either as users, developers, publishers, providers etc. Enforcement is only really possible with overwhelming consensus.

Without a value system that goes beyond the isolationist mentality of “tekkies” (“it’s the users fault, they just don’t understand us”), and which embraces, learns from and respects the work done over centuries in the field of semantics, semiotics, etc the present fleeting opportiunity to make the web a source of inspiration comparable to say the great library of Alexandria, will simply be lost.

A new standard is great. It can mend old problems and add new longed for functionality. However, no matter how well made this new standard is, if the web browsers people use don’t support it fully(the problem we have today), then we will still have to do things the old way, pushing the real problem ahead of us.

What I spend probably more than half of my time making web sites with is browser compatibility. And what my clients complain about most of the time is the very same.

What we need is ONE ENGINE with FULL SUPPORT of the standards, USED BY ALL of the browsers out there so that we actually have a stable ground to build our sites and web applications on.

There can’t be a hundred engines interpreting the standards in a hundred different ways. The world wide web should be accessible to any user, any platform on any device. Without that no gain will come from making a new standard, in my opinion.

So basically, if a new standard is to be made, it has to be available with full support to existing browsers in some way.

Maybe one browser engine is an impossible dream, but then there should at least be a browser engine validator service that can let the public know what browsers are good to use and which ones are not.

I actually think the W3C should invest the time and resources into generating a rendering engine rather than creating yet another spec.

I realise this a contentious issue, but I honestly do not see the point in having so many different rendering engines. Everybody is simply reinventing the wheel. Let the browser vendors concentrate on what they should have been concentrating all along: browser usability, not markup.

Eric Johansson wrote:

What we need is ONE ENGINE with FULL SUPPORT of the standards, USED BY ALL of the browsers out there

There can’t be a hundred engines interpreting the standards in a hundred different ways. The world wide web should be accessible to any user, any platform on any device. Without that no gain will come from making a new standard, in my opinion.

Fernando Franco asked Tim Berners-Lee about the possibility of W3C making a browser (or at least a rendering engine).

The real problem of the W3C is a frightening lack of ability to explain their intentions clearly. Their Recommendations are written in a nearly impenetrable style, and the overarching map to their interconnectedness is nowhere to be found on their site.

This re-invention of HTML that is porposed is a step backward in the same vein as CSS2., which has recently, bafflingly been demoted from a Candidate Recommendation to a Working Draft. I predict the same fate for a revitalized HTML.

The lack of full adoption of XHTML is not due to any inherent problems with the difference between the two languages, it’s due to the W3C’s failure to explain clearly and promote effectively what the heck it was there for. The same goes for their modularizing efforts and their products. Many reputable sources are still completely unaware of the existence of XHTML 1.1.

Extracting a view of their Master Plan for the Web from their own published material is close to an exercise in futility. Parallel development of HTML and XHTML will only further this state of affairs. Of course, if new work on HTML and XHTML proceeds at the pace of CSS 2.1 and the CSS3 modules, we won’t have to deal with the fallout from this decision for nearly another decade.

“This re-invention of HTML that is porposed is a step backward in the same vein as CSS2., which has recently, bafflingly been demoted from a Candidate Recommendation to a Working Draft.”

Moving a document from WD to Last Call, Last Call to CR, etc is made accordingly to the Process Document. The Process Document has been written incrementally.

When a document is going from CR to Last Call, it doesn’t mean it is bad. It just mean that significant changes have been made in the specification. CSS WG which is composed from Browser Vendors mainly want to create a CSS 2.1 specification which really follows what is implemented out there. So they impose on themselves very strict rules to not have reproaches of the type “It is in the spec, but not implemented”.

A specification can jump from one stage A to another stage B, if the all entrance criterias of stage B are met. It means for example you can jump from WD to CR again.

It is better that the vendors creating the products we are using agree before releasing a specification.

Well, I think most programmers consider HTML as “formatting”, just the few “tags” you use to set the presentation of what your server script language outputed.

Regarding firms, the web things may only be a part of the computer service, which is only a part of the company, not a priority.
Hey guys, you can’t make a website within two week-ends anymore. SGML-based user agents dealt with tag soup, XML doesn’t permit that. That’s not future, that’s here. Compliance matters.

I have been forced (though I happily complied) into the world of xhtml in 2003. I am happy with the standard. I am excited about upcoming standards. Though I seem to be alone most of the time for this, I am excited about the XHTML2 specification/standard. I hate the wait. It is like waiting for the newest version of your latest software. I am excited about the l, column, section and header elements. I think that the expanded use of the object tag will help. I think this will be a great thing. I would like to see it soon. That is my biggest complaint about XHTML2: It’s not here. Browsers are not going to forget how to parse XHTML1/1.1 any time soon. XHTML3.2 and 2.0 are still alive and kicking. What is hindering our adoption? Thanks for the hard work, and your consideration of our thoughts, even mine.

This is just great. I’m still having a hard time putting quotes around strings, putting slashes in empty elements, and putting “xml:”, in front of “lang”. I don’t even want to think about learning XForms. ZOMG, new tags everywhere! What were they thinking?!

I, for one, will welcome HTML 4.5 very gladly.

Thanks Tim! Thanks Microsoft!

What about CSS 1.5, by the way?

I mean, there was too many changes, let’s face it. IE does not even really support it, after like 5 years of common use of CSS 2 (and it being defined for more than nine years). With Microsoft budget, and expertise, if they cannot do it, who can, right? (and I’m not even talking about CSS 3… round corners, ZOMG! We’ll need at least three to four steps, between CSS 2, and CSS 3…).

…

What a laugh. Do you feel the web developer/master job is still too easy? I mean, “let’s make it a bit harder, so we won’t lose our job because everyone would otherwise be able to do it”… is this it? and all this is to exchange data… this is so screwed up… this is so much a waste of energy, which could be used for so many, and so far better things… well, this is what makes today society… this is no worse than in any other domain… time to wake up people, yeah?

Simplicity is the key to a better world. In computing, we should make usability, accessibility, and universality, as prerequisites, and throw all the rest. It souldn’t take much time, and we would have to do it only once. Ever.

(Oh noes…! the comments are moderated…! Well, writing it is enough to let off some steam… and at least one other individual might read it… It’s not as if I was not used to it… I just hope I will be able to achieve my projects, before it’s too late… cuddle with one of his imaginary girlfriend)

I am totally sick of companies making existing technology obsolete, usually for the purpose of making everybody spend more for the replacement. Examples:

Microsoft forcing people to upgrade operating systems every three years or so. For long-term scientific studies, OPERATING SYSTEMS SHOULD BE UNCHANGING CONSTANTS, not cash cows for monopoly corporations.

The forced replacement of NTSC TV with HDTV, so we can “beat Japan”.

They just replaced VCR with DVD, and now they put out Blu-Ray, a new system that requires replacing the player again.

The forced change from MS-DOS to Windows made some scientific research projects impossible. The internal timing of Windows precludes accurate control over the precise timing of computer-controlled experiments. Windows proponents claim that timestamps can cure this, but you can’t give the organism under study a timestamp telling it that the stimulus should have occurred 22 ms earlier.

The forced replacement of line printers with Postscript printers, making it impossible to keep legacy systems working.

All of these changes causes loss of access to old materials, and can cause scientific research projects to be terminated early due to the lack of suitable replacement equipment.

Any forced change to XHTML is going to cost a lot of people a lot of money recoding old documents.

David: You are not alone. There are people who work on XHTML 2, and there are other like you and me that think the new elements are needed. However, I will always need to make an HTML + CSS 1 + JS (because HTML 4 is so poorly rendered nowadays, just think of quotations) alternate version since I do not want to say to old browsers users that they are morons and must get a modern browser. Even these browser make little use of the rich information provided by my markup. Supporting “modern” standards is much more than displaying rounded corners.

Anonymous Coward: I do not believe that W3C’s aim is to make things harder. If you don’t need XForms, don’t use them. If you need them, they exist. Don’t you believe that standardization (as a pre-requisite fot interoperability) is a good thing? You said “all this is to exchange data”; I think communication and preservation of culture matter.

Larry: Who said all existing HTML documents have to be turned to XHTML? Older specs are still here, and there are many software that can deal with all kinds of HTML and with tag soup. The W3C’s strategy is to improve existing things, not to force you to switch with flashy useless features.

(QA-blog people: I have an OpenID yet but the identification seems to work only with Typekey. Don’t you agree that the text area is small, and preview useful? And “some HTML is okay” is not helpful to me, but at least it is not as bad as “you can use HTML for style” ;) But that are details, thanks for letting us comment.)

My pages are all done in HTML and they work. My boss has put an incredible amount of time into making his pages totally XHTML compliant, and they are barely functional. We must lose customers all the time because of the implementation.

As a [redacted] Website developer, this changing of language by browser, technologies, then rewriting old technologies is silly. We need a standardization of web programming. One language, one manual, and for it to work on EVERY version of EVERY browser. Incredibily frustrating. [Website URI redacted] took me 13 hours to build. But it took me an additional 100 hours to make it work perfectly on other browsers/versions/OS. Crazy. What is the point?

I am still unable to envisage that i must convert my site [redacted] to HTML5 or not ! I am not a beginner buh i am scared if it break downs the blog.Using shiv js or modernizr is good ? for IE6 and IE7 ? Anyone gimme a polite comment !

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